Of Orphans and Freaks and Potentially Dinosaurs
by Deanie McQueen
Summary: Sam and Dean take in Jesse, the wee antichrist. Antics ensue. Family happens.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Canon said goodbye to Jesse too soon.

**Of Orphans and Freaks and Potentially Dinosaurs**  
by  
Deanie McQueen

_Chapter One - Snow_

* * *

It's night.

The snow falls softly, the noise like a shimmer as the flakes nestle on the ground. Dean feels the wet chill as he comes to, and he doesn't want to open his eyes because he remembers where he was knocked out, what the scene looked like and it's a scene that nobody ever wants to wake up to. Winter is a beautiful, dead season, but nobody wants to wake up to the dead in winter.

And then he remembers his brother. It only takes half a second because Sam's always there. Sam's always in Dean's head.

His eyes fly open, and he blinks rapidly, willing them to become accustomed to the darkness. It doesn't take long. He sees the woman with blonde hair, her face right next to his, her eyes open and lifeless with a trickle of dried blood running from her lower lip to the bottom of her chin. He was supposed to save her.

Obviously, he failed.

"Sam?" he croaks, and he sits up, snow falling from his jacket, and he's so cold, but he tries to forget it. He turns his head to the left, sees his brother's ridiculously large frame curled about ten feet away. Still. Like a corpse. "_Sammy_?"

He gets to his feet, immediately tumbles on the slick ground and falls to his knees. Gets up again.

He slips and skids and falls again, but this time next to his brother, whose shoulder he takes in a numb hand and squeezes, pulls until the huge little bastard rolls onto his back. Long locks fall onto closed eyes like a Pantene commercial, and Dean almost snorts. But he doesn't. He leans in instead to determine that Sam is breathing, which he is. "Sam? C'mon, man, wake up."

He shakes his brother vigorously, contemplates unleashing a loogie because maybe that'll get a rise out of him, and it'll be funny, too. Whatever. As long as Sam wakes up.

"C'mon, wake _up_."

The snow crunches behind him. Dean freezes. It takes feet to make that noise, feet that are moving and therefore alive, and there's somebody behind him. There's somebody fucking behind him and he unconsciously squeezes Sam's shoulder all the tighter because Dean's not leaving him, not ever, and everything inside of him is aware of this as he twists around to see what's coming for them this time.

But there's nothing there. And it's quiet now. Just the falling snow, glittering like diamonds under the night sky.

He whips back around to his brother, the "Sammy" leaving his throat like ghost when his eyes catch sight of the small sneakers planted on his brother's other side. Dean's eyes make their way slowly up the short legs, to the small arms crossed and shivering over the small hoodie, to the brown hair falling over huge eyes.

"Well, I'll be damned," he croaks, because he's seen this face before.

"I can wake him up."

"Yeah?" Dean asks.

"Uh huh." The huge eyes close for a long moment.

Sam wakes up with a gasp, and he turns, his head rolling over to rest on the tip of Dean's knee.

"Thanks, kid," Dean says. "Sam, look who it is."

Sam blinks and breathes heavily before sitting up and looking up and he says, "Holy shit."

Jesse looks somewhat scandalized, but mostly amazed by Sam's mouth. Dean elbows his brother in his already bruised ribs. Sam hisses, but shakes it off, his eyes still rooted to the tiny antichrist they thought was gone good. "Where did you-"

"I killed it," Jesse says, and there's something desperate in his voice. "I killed it for you. You don't have to worry about it anymore."

"That's...great," Dean says, and for the first time notices the blood by the kid's feet.

"It got her first, though."

"That's on us," Sam tells him.

Jesse bites his lip, shifts on his feet, looks east. "There's a lot of blood over there. I exploded him. The insides look weird. Not like they did in my science book."

"It wasn't human," Dean reminds him. It wasn't human and nothing should ever be seen from the inside-out. "Jesse-"

"My parents are dead."

Snow falls. It's the only sound other than the wind and their breathing before Dean manages, "Shit, kid. I'm so sorry."

"They're dead and Australia was a bust and you said we were all freaks." The words race out of his mouth and he shivers and there are tears. Dean spies tears. He's not sure he can deal with tears, but he can deal with shivers and he takes off his jacket and gets to his feet and wraps it around the boy. Then he helps Sam up.

"You can't find freakier," Dean agrees. He's so fucking cold, but that's fine. It'll be fine.

"Don't...I can't...please?" Jesse says, as Sam and Dean guide him around the corpse of the woman they failed to save, corral him to the car. "You said we were all-"

"You're in good company," Sam assures him, and he opens the back door of the Impala, shoves crumpled fast food bags and discarded clothes aside to make room for the kid.

They get him settled and take their respective seats. Dean fidgets behind the wheel, feels unnerved by the lack of seatbelts in the back for the first time in forever.

"I killed him for you," Jesse says again. _You owe me_, he's saying without actually saying it. It doesn't matter, because it's all Dean hears. And he agrees.

"It's cool, kid. We've got your back," he says. "Just...hold tight. We'll find a place to rest up, okay? We'll get things figured-"

"You said we were all freaks." _Don't leave me_.

Dean's well-versed in orphan. He nods. "We are."

"You promise?"

Dean looks in the rearview mirror, watches as the kid wraps the jacket more tightly around himself.

He puts the car in drive. She takes to the snow with ease, carries them as carefully as Dean's mother carried him in the womb.

He says, "I promise."


	2. Rest

**Of Orphans and Freaks and Potentially Dinosaurs**  
by  
Deanie McQueen

_Chapter Two - Rest_

_

* * *

_

Resting up was a good plan. Resting up is an _excellent_ plan, Dean decides, as it gives him the opportunity to stand in a grocery aisle full of candy with an antichrist. Sam's off looking at whatever Sammy Approved food Sams look at, and Jesse's facing a moral dilemma between Three Musketeers and Twix.

"I mean, I know I want chocolate, but do I want soft or crunchy chocolate?"

Dean gives this question serious thought. "It's a tough choice," he confirms, happy that he'd already found his Starbursts. "That whipped stuff is pretty good."

"It is pretty good," Jesse sighs a little with the weight of the choice before him, eyes darting back and forth between the candy bars in each hand. His sneakers squeak loudly in the quiet of the store; at 3 AM, they're practically the only ones wandering around. "But crunchy is good, too."

Dean opens his arms when he shrugs a _what can I say_. Kid's making an excellent point.

He leaves Jesse to his choice, decides he should try to find Sam something boring and possibly sugar free. Bending down to inspect various candy, Dean knows it was a good idea to come. After they'd made it to the car, it'd been all silence and heaviness. Their motel was at least an hour away, which left plenty of time for Sam to start worrying about their current cash situation and for Dean to wonder if Jesse was hungry.

It didn't matter if they were broke: food came first. Dean made the executive decision that Jesse needed a candy bar, and pulled into the first grocery store he found. Fuck knows what the kid had been through in the past 24 hours, and candy bars cured most ills. Sam grumbled, of course, but kept mostly silent and stalked off to find breakfast type things for the morning.

"Dean?"

Sugar-free gumdrops in hand, Dean looks over to Jesse. "Yeah, dude?"

"I'm thinking Twix," Jesse says, and nods once to affirm. "Tonight is a crunchy night."

"It totally is," Dean agrees, eyes darting up for a moment to spy Sam at the end of the aisle, walking closer with green things in hand.

They walk to the check-out together, handing their items to the heavily bejeweled woman working the register. "All this candy's not for him, I hope," she says, looking pointedly at Jesse. "My husband's a dentist."

Jesse narrows his eyes a little and Dean has a sudden and vivid worry that Register Lady will soon have horns or a third boob, so he checks out her nametag – Dolores – and leans forward quickly, flashing a smile. "Nah, Dolores. It's all for me. I've got a weakness for sweet things," he says, and winks.

It's a shitty line as far as pick-ups go, but Dolores blushes like she hasn't heard such a thing in years and thankfully, shuts up.

The checkout's over in minutes, Sam handing over the bills like they're pieces of his soul. Dean makes a mental note to find a motel near some kind of bar, and fishes the Twix out of the bag as they walk to the car. He tosses it to Jesse, whose smile is already dimming a little without the distraction of shopping.

The little boy catches it, reflexes sharp, and smiles. Dean feels a kind of warmness in his chest when he sees it, happy because kids should smile. Kids should almost always be smiling, and the small one on Jesse's face is something the world should see more often.

"Thanks," Jesse says, and hesitates for a moment before walking up to Dean. He stands without moving for short second before reaching out and awkwardly patting Dean on the forearm, but when he looks up again, the smile's back. "Candy's awesome."

Dean smiles back, because it's true.


End file.
